Reviews

Serenity is a movie based on a TV show that I first heard about here on Gamegrene, and it's a must-see for all gamers, since it accurately depicts (in my opinion, anyway) the role-playing atmosphere we've come to love and enjoy. Here is a review of the movie, the show, and the roleplaying game.

Okay, so you've read Dead Inside (DI) (or my review) and want more? How about taking a tour in the Real World as revealed by the first DI supplement Cold Hard World: The Real World Sourcebook for the Dead Inside RPG?

Killed and looted your way to boredom? Try healing and giving stuff away! Does it bother you when your roleplaying degenerates into roll playing? Do your games sound like "I try to hit him" (rolls) "Does a 17 hit?" instead of "Gritting my teeth, I open my mouth in a wordless yell, raise my sword above my head and, heedless of defense, I strike with all my might." Tired of killing, looting, plundering, stealing, mayhem, and combat with monsters/villains for little reason? Try Dead Inside.

Maze of the Minotaur is a GM's reference guide for the use of minotaurs as a full-blown race rather than a singular foe. In keeping with the aims of the Masters and Minions project, author Brian Stith has concocted five variants of minotaur for use in role-playing, along with notes on ecology, social structure, and character development for the monsters.

This book is the first in the innovative Masters and Minions series from Behemoth3. The series takes a second, closer look at monsters from the early days of D&D, and provides GMs with something much, much more than just a goofy looking critter to suck hit points from the PCs before they meet the villain. A Swarm of Stirges gives the stirge some things it has always lacked: a complete life-cycle, a place in the ecosystem, a raison d'etre. Unfortunately, Stirges is a collection of many incredibly cool ideas and one monumentally bad one.

Nocturnum is a product published by Fantasy Flight Games for use with the d20 Call of Cthulhu rules system. Weighing in at 270 pages of content, not counting credits, ads and handouts, Nocturnum truly is an epic campaign. Fans of Call of Cthulhu, both d20 and Chaosium, will not be disappointed by this masterwork.

When the call went out for someone to write an article about PARANOIA for Gamegrene, I immediately volunteered. Not only did I want to explain to the uninitiated exactly what makes PARANOIA a joy to play, but to repay a personal debt I owed to the game. You see, PARANOIA returned me to role-playing.

Metal Gear Solid. Rambo. Rambo II. That other movie with the guy who fought in that one place that one time. At least one of these should flash through your mind when you think of the popular culture conception of a "mercenary." If you've ever wanted to run a mercenary campaign, The Modern: Mercenary Manual from Ronin Arts contains a plethora of rules that will have you parachuting behind enemy lines, negotiating mercenary contracts with morally bankrupt dictatorships, and, most importantly, shooting stuff. A lot. With guns.

TimeLords: where you can design yourself. Thrust through time and space by an artifact you don't understand. To go home, you must survive long enough to learn to control the awesome forces at your disposal. But by then, would you want to go back? (A word of warning: TimeLords is a game that strives to be as realistic as possible.)

The inside book jacket explains that "(t)his book is a celebration of that phenomenon (D&D, natch) and a tribute to the millions of players who brought the Dungeons & Dragons experience to life." When I think of tributes, I think of missing man formations flying over stadiums, of 21-gun salutes and taps played on a lone bugle. As a tribute, this book is the equivalent of a handful of cellophane balloons released from the rooftop of a car dealership just before noon on a Sunday, with Kool and the Gang playing on a cassette deck nearby.